Not the Life He Had in Mind
by Draco-senpai
Summary: The table that had been three for five whole years had finally returned to a table of four. The prodigal son had come home. But it was awkward. And that grates on Thor. Were they not family? One-Shot, AU Human/Modern


Story Notes:

"His strength is fading, his dreams are blind / This is not the life he had in mind." —House of Their Dreams, Casting Crowns

Beta'd by Chibi_Potter

* * *

Dinner was awkward, to say the least. Mother's cooking was surely delicious as always, but somewhere between Thor's plate and his mouth, the food turned to cardboard. Although Mom tried to start conversation, her attempts were met with muffled, one-word answers and long stretches of silence punctuated by the clinking of cutlery and chewing.

Loki sat across from Thor, just like he had when they were kids growing up in this very house. It was jarring, this sense of familiarity, as if the evenings Thor spent eating dinner in his bedroom because he couldn't bear staring at the empty chair before him had never existed at all.

It had been five years since that frightening night when Loki had stormed out of the house. Sixteen and angry, his face contorted with rage. It was a burning image in the darkness of Thor's nightmares, one he'd never forget. None had seen or heard from him since then. Until now.

Loki had changed. His hair was a long, tangled mat that fell past his shoulders. The skin beneath his eyes was bruised a dark purple. Thor remembered their competition to wolf down their mom's meals, yet now Loki picked at his food with little interest. Every time his jaw moved or his head turned, the light over the dining table glinted off a metal ring that pierced his lower lip. Dark clothes wrapped tightly around his reed-thin body, and chipped black polished nails glimmered with each twitch of his long-fingered hand. His green eyes shifted warily between Mother's hand, spooning more food onto his plate, and Father's hand wrapped around his water glass. He had only looked at Thor once.

It was hard to tell what Dad thought of the entire situation. In fact, he had yet to speak to Loki (or anyone for that matter). There had been a knock at the front door just as Mom set dinner on the table. Dad had answered the door. When his father continued to stand there, unmoving, Thor rose to join him.

That's when he found Loki on their doorstep. His little brother stared definitely back at them until their mother wedged herself between them and swallowed her youngest son in a hug. How she managed to wrangle the three men to her dining table without a scene right there on their own doorstep escaped the dumbstruck older brother. Thor had created many fantasies of his own—of opening Loki's bedroom door to find him at his desk, of discovering Loki had been escorted home by the police, and even, yes, of standing before his brother's coffin, whispering his last goodbyes—but the reality of his brother's homecoming seemed to be almost… anti-climatic. The lack of emotion only seemed to make it untrue, like another one of Thor's fantasies. Soon, Thor would come to his senses, find himself eating alone in his room once more, and refuse to acknowledge the dulled ache in his chest.

Abruptly, Loki shoved his plate away from him. Everyone looked up.

 _No_ , Thor thought ruefully, _this isn't a fantasy._

"I'm full," Loki announced, but Thor knew it was a was only an excuse. Then again, Thor would have probably done anything to get away from the tension of the dining table if he were forced to endure five more minutes of it.

"Nonsense, darling, you've hardly touched your dinner," Mom chided gently. She reached out to touch his wrist.

Loki jerked violently at her sudden movement. His hand flew up, catching her palm. _Slap!_ The sound seemed to hang in the silence of the table. Everyone froze; Loki and Mom, their hands poised in the air, Dad, his glass at his lips, and Thor, his fork held upright were he speared his next bite.

Mom's eyes were blown wide as she stared incredulity at her son. Loki's own eyes widened as if he only then realized what he had done.

"I—I'm sorry," Loki stammered, his hand falling. "Should I—" The chair scraped across the floor as he stood. "I'll just-just leave—"

"Loki," Dad's voice rang sharply with the clank of a glass set on the table. Loki's quick retreat faltered at his powerful voice.

Thor clutched his free hand into a fist. _Please, Dad,_ he pleaded silently, _don't._ If Dad started yelling, they'd lose Loki again. Thor was sure of it.

"You are excused to your room."

Thor was taken aback by his father's mellow response. He glanced at Dad, then at Loki. Light gleamed off the ring of his brother's slackened jaw.

"Well?" rose Dad's haughty question. Loki reared to life, turning shiftly and making a break for the bedrooms.

"And take a shower!" Dad called after him, but Loki was already gone.

"But—Odin," Mom said as she grasped Dad's wrist.

"Leave him be, Frigga," Dad said as he raised his water again.

Thor carefully set his fork on his plate without eating his late bite. "May I be excused?"

"Oh, sweetheart," Mom crooned. "Please don't—"

"You may," Dad answered gruffly without looking up from his plate.

* * *

Thor stood cautiously before following his brother to the bedrooms, hoping he didn't look like he was rushing to escape.

Thor only hesitated for a moment before knocking on his brother's bedroom door. He remembered how Loki would lock the door to his room when he didn't want to see anyone. But upon the force of his gentle knock, the door yawned into the room.

Loki sat motionless on his childhood bed. It was strangely comforting to see him amongst the soft browns and dark blues of the room. Nothing in the room had changed in five years, save the spotless floor and dust-free surfaces that suggested Mom's intervention. The backpack Loki used in high school still hung from the coat rack and his miscellaneous collection of CDs and movies still sat in a stack on his desk. Thor could almost imagine that time was still in front of them, not behind and lost forever, that they were five years younger and his brother had come back before time was truly lost.

The sudden, stifling need to embrace his younger brother, to hold onto his fantasy and _make it so_ , crashed against the dam of his self-restraint. Thor called softly, "Loki."

But as he took a step closer, Loki turned his head ever-so-slightly in Thor's direction. It was enough for his foreign long hair to move and the unfamiliar silver ring to glimmer in the low lighting, shattering the spell of Thor's wistful imagination.

Shoving the ridiculous feeling of disappointment at his ungranted wish to the back of his mind, Thor repeated, "Loki?"

Thor watched his brother's shoulders drop with his sigh. A thin hand raised to wipe at his face before Loki answered, "Yes?"

It was all the encouragement Thor needed. He strode across the room to his brother and haul Loki to his feet and into his arms. Thor crushed him to his chest, a thousand questions bubbling in his mind at once. _Where did you go? When did you get piercings?_ _What changed you so much?_ But, sudden emotion swelled in his throat and he found he could voice none of them.

"You're here," Thor whispered instead—part awe, part question. He needed to hear it from Loki's own two lips.

A shudder ran through Loki's much too thin body.

"I'm here," his voice warbled before a sob broke his carefully constructed indifference. He buried his face in his older brother's neck and wept.

* * *

"This feels like a dream," Loki whispered into the darkness of the room. His voice was so quiet it wouldn't have stirred a soul had Thor not been awake to hear. The two of them lay on the double bed side by side, Loki's head propped by Thor's shoulder. Their parents had yet to disturb them. Thor doubted they would until the next morning. Thor was grateful for it. He wanted at least one night to hold the solid, however frighteningly thin form of his brother.

"It isn't," Thor murmured, moving his arm under Loki's head to hug him more firmly to him. Staring into the darkness of the room, he could focus on the feel of his brother next to him: warm, corporeal, _alive_.

"How can it be?" Loki almost whined in his distress. Thor's arm tightened around his brother. Despite the flood of tears not hours before, Loki's emotions surged and heaved under a thin surface. Loki was too thin; Thor couldn't stop thinking it.

"Everything is so _normal_ ," Loki continued, "My life was flipped on its head, but here, time rolled on like it was meant to do—like it didn't even notice I was gone. As if I was never here to begin with—"

"Loki, please," Thor protested weakly. His heart ached when he thought of all the moments he and Loki should have had together in the past five years but didn't. It chafed his feelings raw.

"Why did I come back?" the horrible question spilled from Loki's lips. "If I am not needed here, why did I feel so strongly to actually show my face—"

"Loki, stop!" Thor snapped, louder than he meant to, but Loki's words boiled beneath his skin. Lowering his voice, Thor hissed, "How could you think that way? I thought the world of you, Loki, and when you left, I—I only had the rubble of one to live for."

Loki stayed silent, trembling lightly and curling in on himself as if he was trying to break away. Thor held on fast.

"Everything changed the day you left," Thor refuted. "The Odinsons became Odinson. Mom cried for days—weeks! Dad began working hours and hours of overtime—even on weekends. The house was so empty. Leftovers began to overflow the fridge because Mom still cooked to feed an army!"

Loki's trembles turned into stifled sobs.

"And, I," Thor pressed on, his own throat thickening and his words dropping into rough whispers, "I hung onto every last thread of hope that you would come crawling through my bedroom window or sneaking through the back door like when we were kids. I about dropped out of school altogether before Mom pleaded me— _begged_ me—to see it through. When the authorities called off the search, I had packed a bag, stolen Dad's keys to go look for you myself before Dad caught me…."

As Loki's sobs became more frantic, Thor found himself calming. Loki's previous indifference had unsettled Thor, but to see how affected he was at Thor recounting proved the old, familiar Loki was not yet lost.

"I'm sorry," Loki wheezed through his sobs and pants, "so—sorry." He was curling into Thor, seeking comfort from his older brother. Thor enveloped him gladly, his hand running up that boney spine as he rocked them gently.

"When Dad told me—" Loki's voice squeaked mid-sentence, but he gulped through his tears to continue. "When he finally admitted I wasn't theirs, I was so mad, so—so scared. I ran away before he could reject me. I couldn't face Mom—she—she'd lied to me!"

Thor rocked him steadily, listening to his brother's voice grow more and more horse.

"And I—I couldn't look at you," Loki confessed with another sob. "I couldn't when I knew and—and you didn't—carrying on in their pretty little lie—" a shuddering gasp interrupted Loki's words as his lungs remembered to breathe. "They—" Loki stammered, "they told you…?"

"Yeah," Thor answered, his voice a low murmur. "The second night after you left."

Loki took another shuddering breath, slowly relaxing, his emotions slowly calming. Silence enveloped the two once more, but it was no longer uncomfortable. How could it be with the raw emotions Thor accepted to bear with his brother?

Exhaustion had crept into Loki's body and voice when he finally broke the silence.

"I thought if I ran away, started somewhere new, someplace far, far away, I'd find out who I really was, the _true_ me. I went to the city to find that no one wanted to hire a high school dropout with no identification and no skill. I did what I had to—" his voice raised as if he was about to cry again, but he gulped it down. "It—it was so horrible. Every day, on the streets, digging through _garbage_." Loki shuddered at some better-forgotten memory. Thor rubbed his arm steadily up and down in hope to offer some comfort.

"It wasn't until I was picked up by a man who owned a questionable bar, I made some money. He didn't care who I was, how old I was—He was only looking for a pretty face and a desperate soul to take the offer—I don't—" Loki's voice was high again. "I don't know why I stayed. I was paid under the table, making far less than minimum wage, supposedly to make up for room and board, broken glasses and wasted liquor," Loki paused to take several breaths. Thor waited.

"I had no voice," Loki continued, "no protection. One misstep and I was back on the streets. My days were so dark and bleak— _terrible_ —I tried everything, substances, though I never had the money to keep it up, the liquor I was serving, but it was too easily noticed, relationships—though, if they didn't leave me for being so dependent, it was because—because—" Loki's voice rose alarming, this time the sob escaping.

Thor hushed him, his hand still rubbing up and down as he rocked Loki once more. Thor didn't need his brother to finish the sentence to know the relationships had been harmful—if not outright abusive—leaving his brother even more powerless than before. It was terrible to finally fill the missing memory of his brother the last five years with this horrifying skeleton of a nightmare come true. Loki was never meant to go through such things. Six, seven years ago, it was nearly unthinkable, but as Loki shuddered and gasped in his arms, Thor realized that the cruel, harsh world cared nothing of it.

When Loki could speak again, he croaked, "When the bar went under investigation—something-something about tax evasion—I ran before I could be discovered. But I was back on the street again, and I couldn't. I just couldn't, I _couldn't_."

Thor's eyes stung at Loki's heartbreaking confession. He buried his nose in his little brother's hair, not sparing a thought to its urban street grime and stench.

"I thought," Loki sniffled, "I thought something I hadn't allowed myself to think in years—Dad… Dad never charged me for living with him. I thought of Mom, the lunches she packed us for school. I thought of you, and I—I realized how terribly lonely I was.

"I made it here. I still don't know how, but I did. God help me, I did."

"You did," Thor repeated in a mutter against the crown of his brother's head. There was something in its repetition that made it concrete, immovable. "You're here," He said again just to make it that much more fathomable. "You're here, and God help _me_ ," he emphasized with a strong squeeze, "I sure as _hell_ won't let you go."

Loki giggled softly at Thor's antics. Thor felt his little brother's grin pressing into his shoulder as they cuddled closer still.

"You're still my brother, you know?" Thor whispered, almost to himself. Loki stilled against his side.

"Thor, I—"

Thor charged forward, "You are. We were raised together, we played together, we did everything together. I wouldn't be _me_ if it hadn't been for that. Blood, adopted—whatever! I will never think of you as anything less than my brother. I would sooner gouge out an eye or—or shave off all my hair—"

"You wouldn't!" Loki stage-gasped at Thor confession.

"I would!" Thor countered, tickling his brother's side. He was gentle, only enough to make Loki squirm. Loki pinched back, a little harder than Thor would have liked, but he didn't say so aloud. As the two boys settled once more, Thor once again tucked Loki into his side.

"I just," Thor began, "I just want you to know that you're my brother, and I love you, and that—that—" Water sprang into Thor's eyes without warning. It was as if his self-control had burst, and all the pending tears were gushing across his temples and into his hair.

"Thor?" Loki asked, his voice filled with sudden apprehension. He lifted his head and turned fully to gaze into Thor's face.

Thor reached for his brother to flatten him against his chest ignoring the small squeak of protest Loki had given.

"I'm so glad you're home."

* * *

Author's Notes: Hello, friends! This is my first posted fan fiction (but I've been writing for a while), so I hope you enjoyed. To be honest, I never imagined my first work would be this story. But the story was finished! So what was I to say? Tell me what you think! I'd love the feedback. I plan to post more stories in the future. (What fandom? We'll have to find out!) But, who knows? All I see is chaos in the immediate future…

Thanks for reading.

 _Doumo arigatou gozaimashita! —Chibi_Potter_


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